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Title: St. Ronan's Well
Author: Sir Walter Scott
Release Date: March 6, 2007 [EBook #20749]
Language: English
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Standard Edition
St. Ronan's Well
By
Sir Walter Scott, Bart.
With Introductory Essay and Notes
by Andrew Lang
Illustrated
Dana Estes and Company
Publishers ... Boston
The Standard Edition
of the Novels and Poems of Sir Walter Scott. Limited to one thousand numbered and registered sets, of which this is
No. 835
Copyright, 1894.
By Estes and Lauriat
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ST. RONAN'S WELL
Volume I.
PAGE
Meg Dods (p. 13)
Frontispiece
The Meeting in the Wood
137
Preparing for the Duel
198
Volume II.
Reappearance of Tyrrel
127
Clara entering Tyrrel's Room
307
[Pg ix]
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
TO
ST. RONAN'S WELL.
“‘St. Ronan's Well’ is not so much my favourite as certain of its predecessors,” Lady Louisa Stuart wrote to Scott on
March 26, 1824. “Yet still I see the author's hand in it, et c'est tout dire. Meg Dods, the meeting” (vol. i. chap. ix.),
“and the last scene between Clara and her brother, are marked with the true stamp, not to be matched or mistaken. Is
the Siege of Ptolemais really on the anvil?” she goes on, speaking of the projected Crusading Tales, and obviously
anxious to part company with “St. Ronan's Well.” All judgments have not agreed with Lady Louisa's. There is a literary
legend or fable according to which a number of distinguished men, all admirers of Scott, wrote down separately the
name of their favourite Waverley novel, and all, when the papers were compared, had written “St. Ronan's.” Sydney
Smith, writing to Constable on Dec. 28, 1823, described the new story as “far the best that has appeared for some
time. Every now and then there is some mistaken or overcharged humour—but much excellent delineation of character,
the story very well told, and the whole very interesting. Lady Binks, the old landlady, and Touchwood are all very
good. Mrs. Blower particularly so. So are MacTurk and Lady Penelope. I wish he would give his people better names;
Sir Bingo Binks is quite ridiculous.... The curtain should have dropped on finding Clara's glove. Some of the serious
scenes with Clara and her brother are very fine: the knife scene masterly. In her light and gay moments Clara is very
vulgar; but Sir Walter always fails in well-bred men and women, and yet who has seen more of both? and who, in the
ordinary intercourse of society, is better bred? Upon the whole, I call this a very successful exhibition.”
We have seldom found Sydney Smith giving higher praise, and nobody can deny the justice of the censure with which it
is qualified. Scott himself explains, in his Introduction, how, in his quest of novelty, he invaded modern life, and the
domain of Miss Austen. Unhappily he proved by example the truth of his own opinion that he could do “the big bow-
wow strain” very well, but that it was not his celebrare domestica facta. Unlike George Sand, Sir Walter had humour
abundantly, but, as the French writer said of herself, he was wholly destitute of esprit.
We need not linger over definition of these qualities; but we must recognise, in Scott, the absence of lightness of touch,
of delicacy in the small sword-play of conversation. In fencing, all should be done, the masters tell us, with the fingers.
Scott works not even with the wrist, but with the whole arm. The two-handed sword, the old claymore, are his
weapons, not the rapier. This was plain enough in the word-combats of Queen Mary and her lady gaoler in Loch
Leven. Much more conspicuous is the “swashing blow” in the repartee of “St. Ronan's.” The insults lavished on Lady
Binks are violent and cruel; even Clara Mowbray taunts her. Now Lady Binks is in the same parlous case as the
postmistress who dreed penance “for ante-nup,” as Meg Dods says in an interrupted harangue, and we know that, to
the author's mind, Clara Mowbray had no right to throw stones. All these jeers are offensive to generous feeling, and in
the mouth of Clara are intolerable. Lockhart remarked in Scott a singular bluntness of the sense of smell and of taste.
He could drink corked wine without a suspicion that there was anything wrong with it. This curious obtuseness of a
physical sense, in one whose eyesight was so keen, who, “aye was the first to find the hare” in coursing, seems to
correspond with his want of lightness in the invention of badinage. He tells us that, for a long while at least, he had been
unacquainted with the kind of society, the idle, useless underbred society, of watering-places. Are we to believe that the
company at Gilsland, for instance, where he met and wooed Miss Charpentier, was like the company at St. Ronan's?
Lockhart vouches for the snobbishness, “the mean admiration of mean things,” the devotion to the slimmest
appearances of rank. All this is credible enough, but, if there existed a society as dull and base as that which we meet in
the pages of “Mr. Soapy Sponge,” and Surtees's other novels, assuredly it was no theme for the great and generous
spirit of Sir Walter. The worst kind of manners always prevail among people whom moderns call “the second-rate
smart,” and these are drawn in “St. Ronan's Well.” But we may believe that, even there, manners are no longer quite so
hideous as in the little Tweedside watering-place. The extinction of duelling has destroyed, or nearly destroyed, the
swaggering style of truculence; people could not behave as Mowbray and Sir Bingo behave to Tyrrel, in the after-
dinner scene. The Man of Peace, the great MacTurk, with his harangues translated from the language of Ossian, is no
longer needed, and no longer possible. Supposing manners to be correctly described in “St. Ronan's,” the pessimist
himself must admit that manners have improved. But it is not without regret that we see a genius born for chivalry
labouring in this unworthy and alien matter.
The English critics delighted to accuse Scott of having committed literary suicide. He had only stepped off the path to
which he presently returned. He was unfitted to write the domestic novel, and even in “St. Ronan's” he introduces
events of romantic improbability. These enable him to depict scenes of the most passionate tragedy, as in the meeting of
Clara and Tyrrel. They who have loved so blindly and so kindly should never have met, or never parted. It is like a
tragic rendering of the scene where Diana Vernon and Osbaldistone encounter each other on the moonlit moor. The
wild words of Clara, “Is it so, and was it even yourself whom I saw even now?... And, all things considered, I do carry
on the farce of life wonderfully well,”—all this passage, with the silence of the man, is on the highest level of poetic
invention, and Clara ranks with Ophelia. To her strain of madness we may ascribe, perhaps, what Sydney Smith calls
the vulgarity of her lighter moments. But here the genius of Shakspeare is faultless, where Scott's is most faulty and most
mistaken.
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Much confusion is caused in “St. Ronan's Well” by Scott's concession to the delicacy of James Ballantyne. What has
shaken Clara's brain? Not her sham marriage, for that was innocent, and might be legally annulled. Lockhart writes (vii.
208): “Sir Walter had shown a remarkable degree of good-nature in the composition of this novel. When the end came
in view, James Ballantyne suddenly took vast alarm about a particular feature in the heroine's history. In the original
conception, and in the book as actually written and printed, Miss Mowbray's mock marriage had not halted at the
profane ceremony of the church; and the delicate printer shrank from the idea of obtruding on the fastidious public the
possibility of any personal contamination having occurred to a high-born damsel of the nineteenth century.” Scott
answered: “You would never have quarrelled with it had the thing happened to a girl in gingham—the silk petticoat can
make little difference.” “James reclaimed with double energy, and called Constable to the rescue; and, after some
pause, the author very reluctantly consented to cancel and re-write about twenty-four pages, which was enough to
obliterate, to a certain extent, the dreaded scandal—and, in a similar degree, as he always persisted, to perplex and
weaken the course of his narrative, and the dark effect of its catastrophe.”
From a communication printed in the “Athenæum” of Feb. 4, 1893, extracts from the original proof-sheets, it seems
that Lockhart forgot the original plan of the novel. The mock marriage did halt at the church door, but Clara's virtue had
yielded to her real lover, Tyrrel, before the ceremony. Hannah Irwin had deliberately made opportunities for the lovers'
meeting, and at last, as she says, in a cancelled passage, “the devil and Hannah Irwin prevailed.” There followed
remorse, and a determination not to meet again before the Church made them one, and, on the head of this, the mock
marriage shook Clara's reason. This was the original plan; it declares itself in the scene between Tyrrel and Clara (vol. i.
chap, ix.): “Wherefore should not sorrow be the end of sin and folly?” The reviewer in the “Monthly Review” (1824)
says “there is a hint of some deeper cause of grief (see the confession to the brother), but it is highly problematical.” For
all this the delicacy of James Ballantyne is to blame—his delicacy, and Scott's concessions to a respectable man and a
bad critic.
The origin of “St. Ronan's Well” has been described by Lockhart in a familiar passage. As Laidlaw, Scott, and
Lockhart were riding along the brow of the triple-peaked Eildon Hills, Scott mentioned “the row” that was going on in
Paris about “Quentin Durward.” “I can't but think I could make better play still with something German,” he said.
Laidlaw grumbled at this: “You are always best, like Helen MacGregor, when your foot is on your native heath; and I
have often thought that if you were to write a novel, and lay the scene here in the very year you were writing it, you
would exceed yourself.” “Hame's hame,” quoth Scott, smiling, “be it ever sae hamely,” and Laidlaw bade him “stick to
Melrose in 1823.” It was now that Scott spoke of the village tragedy, the romance of every house, of every cottage,
and told a tale of some horrors in the hamlet that lies beyond Melrose, on the north side of Tweed. Laidlaw and
Lockhart believed that this conversation suggested “St. Ronan's Well,” the scene of which has been claimed as their
own by the people of Innerleithen. This little town is beautifully situated where the hills of Tweed are steepest, and least
resemble the bosses verdâtres of Prosper Mérimée. It is now a manufacturing town, like its neighbours, and
contributes its quota to the pollution of “the glittering and resolute streams of Tweed.” The pilgrim will scarce rival
Tyrrel's feat of catching a clean-run salmon in summer, but the scenes are extremely pleasing, and indeed, from this
point to Dryburgh, the beautiful and fabled river is at its loveliest. It is possible that a little inn farther up the water, “The
Crook,” on the border of the moorland, and near Tala Linn, where the Covenanters held a famous assembly, may have
suggested the name of the “Cleikum.” Lockhart describes the prosperity which soon flowed into Innerleithen, and the
St. Ronan's Games, at which the Ettrick Shepherd presided gleefully. They are still held, or were held very lately, but
there will never come again such another Shepherd, or such contests with the Flying Tailor of Ettrick.
Apart from the tragedy of Clara, doubtless the better parts of “St. Ronan's Well” are the Scotch characters. Even our
generation remembers many a Meg Dods, and he who writes has vividly in his recollection just such tartness, such
goodness of heart, such ungoverned eloquence and vigour of rebuke as made Meg famous, successful on the stage, and
welcome to her countrymen. These people, Mrs. Blower and Meg, are Shakspearean, they live with Dame Quickly and
Shallow, in the hearts of Scots, but to the English general they are possibly caviare. In the gallant and irascible MacTurk
we have the waning Highlander: he resembles the Captain of Knockdunder in “The Heart of Mid Lothian,” or an
exaggerated and ill-educated Hector of “The Antiquary.” Concerning the women of the tale, it may be said that Lady
Binks has great qualities, and appears to have been drawn “with an eye on the object,” as Wordsworth says, and from
the life. Lady Penelope seems more exaggerated now than she probably did at the time, for the fashion of affectation
changes. The Winterblossoms and Quacklebens are accurate enough in themselves, but are seen through a
Blackwoodian atmosphere, as it were, through a mist of the temporary and boisterous Scotch humour of the day. The
author occasionally stoops to a pun, and, like that which Hood made in the hearing of Thackeray, the pun is not good.
Indeed the novel, in its view of the decay of the Border, the ruined Laird, the frivolous foolish society of the Well, taking
the place of sturdy William of Deloraine, and farmers like Scott's grandfather, makes a picture of decadence as
melancholy as “Redgauntlet.” “Not here, O Apollo, are haunts meet for thee!” Strangely enough, among the features of
the time, Scott mentions reckless borrowings, “accommodation,” “Banks of Air.” His own business was based on a
“Bank of Air,” “wind-capital,” as Cadell, Constable's partner, calls it, and the bubble was just about to burst, though
Scott had no apprehension of financial ruin. A horrid power is visible in Scott's second picture of la mauvaise pauvre,
the hag who despises and curses the givers of “handfuls of coals and of rice;” his first he drew in the witches of “The
Bride of Lammermoor.” He has himself indicated his desire to press hard on the vice of gambling, as in “The Fortunes
of Nigel.” Ruinous at all times and in every shape, gambling, in Scott's lifetime, during the Regency, had crippled or
destroyed many an historical Scottish family. With this in his mind he drew the portrait of Mowbray of St. Ronan's. His
picture of duelling is not more seductive; he himself had lost his friend, Sir Alexander Boswell, in a duel; on other
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occasions this institution had brought discomfort into his life, and though he was ready to fight General Gourgaud with
Napoleon's pistols, he cannot have approved of the practices of the MacTurks and Bingo Binkses. A maniac, as his
correspondence shows, challenged Sir Walter, insisting that he was pointed at and ridiculed in the character of
MacTurk. (Abbotsford MSS.) It is interesting to have the picture of contemporary manners from Scott's hand—Meg
Dods remains among his immortal portraits; but a novel in which the absurd will of fiction and the conventional Nabob
are necessary machinery can never be ranked so high as even “The Monastery” and “Peveril.” In Scotland, however, it
was infinitely more successful than its admirable successor “Redgauntlet.”
Andrew Lang.
December 1893.
INTRODUCTION
TO
ST. RONAN'S WELL.
The novel which follows is upon a plan different from any other that the author has ever written, although it is perhaps
the most legitimate which relates to this kind of light literature.
It is intended, in a word—celebrare domestica facta—to give an imitation of the shifting manners of our own time, and
paint scenes, the originals of which are daily passing round us, so that a minute's observation may compare the copies
with the originals. It must be confessed that this style of composition was adopted by the author rather from the
tempting circumstance of its offering some novelty in his compositions, and avoiding worn-out characters and positions,
than from the hope of rivalling the many formidable competitors who have already won deserved honours in this
department. The ladies, in particular, gifted by nature with keen powers of observation and light satire, have been so
distinguished by these works of talent, that, reckoning from the authoress of Evelina to her of Marriage, a catalogue
might be made, including the brilliant and talented names of Edgeworth, Austin, Charlotte Smith, and others, whose
success seems to have appropriated this province of the novel as exclusively their own. It was therefore with a sense of
temerity that the author intruded upon a species of composition which had been of late practised with such distinguished
success. This consciousness was lost, however, under the necessity of seeking for novelty, without which, it was much
to be apprehended, such repeated incursions on his part would nauseate the long indulgent public at the last.
The scene chosen for the author's little drama of modern life was a mineral spring, such as are to be found in both
divisions of Britain, and which are supplied with the usual materials for redeeming health, or driving away care. The
invalid often finds relief from his complaints, less from the healing virtues of the Spa itself, than because his system of
ordinary life undergoes an entire change, in his being removed from his ledger and account-books—from his legal folios
and progresses of title-deeds—from his counters and shelves,—from whatever else forms the main source of his
constant anxiety at home, destroys his appetite, mars the custom of his exercise, deranges the digestive powers, and
clogs up the springs of life. Thither, too, comes the saunterer, anxious to get rid of that wearisome attendant himself,
and thither come both males and females, who, upon a different principle, desire to make themselves double.
The society of such places is regulated, by their very nature, upon a scheme much more indulgent than that which rules
the world of fashion, and the narrow circles of rank in the metropolis. The titles of rank, birth, and fortune, are received
at a watering-place without any very strict investigation, as adequate to the purpose for which they are preferred; and as
the situation infers a certain degree of intimacy and sociability for the time, so to whatever heights it may have been
carried, it is not understood to imply any duration beyond the length of the season. No intimacy can be supposed more
close for the time, and more transitory in its endurance, than that which is attached to a watering-place acquaintance.
The novelist, therefore, who fixes upon such a scene for his tale, endeavours to display a species of society, where the
strongest contrast of humorous characters and manners may be brought to bear on and illustrate each other with less
violation of probability, than could be supposed to attend the same miscellaneous assemblage in any other situation.
In such scenes, too, are frequently mingled characters, not merely ridiculous, but dangerous and hateful. The
unprincipled gamester, the heartless fortune-hunter, all those who eke out their means of subsistence by pandering to the
vices and follies of the rich and gay, who drive, by their various arts, foibles into crimes, and imprudence into acts of
ruinous madness, are to be found where their victims naturally resort, with the same certainty that eagles are gathered
together at the place of slaughter. By this the author takes a great advantage for the management of his story,
particularly in its darker and more melancholy passages. The impostor, the gambler, all who live loose upon the skirts of
society, or, like vermin, thrive by its corruptions, are to be found at such retreats, when they easily, and as a matter of
course, mingle with those dupes, who might otherwise have escaped their snares. But besides those characters who are
actually dangerous to society, a well-frequented watering-place generally exhibits for the amusement of the company,
and the perplexity and amazement of the more inexperienced, a sprinkling of persons called by the newspapers
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eccentric characters—individuals, namely, who, either from some real derangement of their understanding, or, much
more frequently, from an excess of vanity, are ambitious of distinguishing themselves by some striking peculiarity in
dress or address, conversation or manners, and perhaps in all. These affectations are usually adopted, like Drawcansir's
extravagances, to show they dare; and I must needs say, those who profess them are more frequently to be found
among the English, than among the natives of either of the other two divisions of the united kingdoms. The reason
probably is, that the consciousness of wealth, and a sturdy feeling of independence, which generally pervade the English
nation, are, in a few individuals, perverted into absurdity, or at least peculiarity. The witty Irishman, on the contrary,
adapts his general behaviour to that of the best society, or that which he thinks such; nor is it any part of the shrewd
Scot's national character unnecessarily to draw upon himself public attention. These rules, however, are not without
their exceptions; for we find men of every country playing the eccentric at these independent resorts of the gay and the
wealthy, where every one enjoys the license of doing what is good in his own eyes.
It scarce needed these obvious remarks to justify a novelist's choice of a watering-place as the scene of a fictitious
narrative. Unquestionably, it affords every variety of character, mixed together in a manner which cannot, without a
breach of probability, be supposed to exist elsewhere; neither can it be denied that in the concourse which such
miscellaneous collections of persons afford, events extremely different from those of the quiet routine of ordinary life
may, and often do, take place.
It is not, however, sufficient that a mine be in itself rich and easily accessible; it is necessary that the engineer who
explores it should himself, in mining phrase, have an accurate knowledge of the country, and possess the skill necessary
to work it to advantage. In this respect, the author of Saint Ronan's Well could not be termed fortunate. His habits of
life had not led him much, of late years at least, into its general or bustling scenes, nor had he mingled often in the society
which enables the observer to “shoot folly as it flies.” The consequence perhaps was, that the characters wanted that
force and precision which can only be given by a writer who is familiarly acquainted with his subject. The author,
however, had the satisfaction to chronicle his testimony against the practice of gambling, a vice which the devil has
contrived to render all his own, since it is deprived of whatever pleads an apology for other vices, and is founded
entirely on the cold-blooded calculation of the most exclusive selfishness. The character of the traveller, meddling, self-
important, and what the ladies call fussing, but yet generous and benevolent in his purposes, was partly taken from
nature. The story, being entirely modern, cannot require much explanation, after what has been here given, either in the
shape of notes, or a more prolix introduction.
It may be remarked, that the English critics, in many instances, though none of great influence, pursued Saint Ronan's
Well with hue and cry, many of the fraternity giving it as their opinion that the author had exhausted himself, or, as the
technical phrase expresses it, written himself out; and as an unusual tract of success too often provokes many persons
to mark and exaggerate a slip when it does occur, the author was publicly accused, in prose and verse, of having
committed a literary suicide in this unhappy attempt. The voices, therefore, were, for a time, against Saint Ronan's on
the southern side of the Tweed.
In the author's own country, it was otherwise. Many of the characters were recognised as genuine Scottish portraits,
and the good fortune which had hitherto attended the productions of the Author of Waverley, did not desert,
notwithstanding the ominous vaticinations of its censurers, this new attempt, although out of his ordinary style.
1st February, 1832.
ST. RONAN'S WELL.
CHAPTER I.
AN OLD-WORLD LANDLADY.
But to make up my tale,
She breweth good ale,
And thereof maketh sale.
Skelton.
Although few, if any, of the countries of Europe, have increased so rapidly in wealth and cultivation as Scotland during
the last half century, Sultan Mahmoud's owls might nevertheless have found in Caledonia, at any term within that
flourishing period, their dowery of ruined villages. Accident or local advantages have, in many instances, transferred the
inhabitants of ancient hamlets, from the situations which their predecessors chose with more respect to security than
convenience, to those in which their increasing industry and commerce could more easily expand itself; and hence
places which stand distinguished in Scottish history, and which figure in David M'Pherson's excellent historical
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map,
can now only be discerned from the wild moor by the verdure which clothes their site, or, at best, by a few
scattered ruins, resembling pinfolds, which mark the spot of their former existence.
The little village of St. Ronan's, though it had not yet fallen into the state of entire oblivion we have described, was,
about twenty years since, fast verging towards it. The situation had something in it so romantic, that it provoked the
pencil of every passing tourist; and we will endeavour, therefore, to describe it in language which can scarcely be less
intelligible than some of their sketches, avoiding, however, for reasons which seem to us of weight, to give any more
exact indication of the site, than that it is on the southern side of the Forth, and not above thirty miles distant from the
English frontier.
A river of considerable magnitude pours its streams through a narrow vale, varying in breadth from two miles to a fourth
of that distance, and which, being composed of rich alluvial soil, is, and has long been, enclosed, tolerably well
inhabited, and cultivated with all the skill of Scottish agriculture. Either side of this valley is bounded by a chain of hills,
which, on the right in particular, may be almost termed mountains. Little brooks arising in these ridges, and finding their
way to the river, offer each its own little vale to the industry of the cultivator. Some of them bear fine large trees, which
have as yet escaped the axe, and upon the sides of most there are scattered patches and fringes of natural copsewood,
above and around which the banks of the stream arise, somewhat desolate in the colder months, but in summer glowing
with dark purple heath, or with the golden lustre of the broom and gorse. This is a sort of scenery peculiar to those
countries, which abound, like Scotland, in hills and in streams, and where the traveller is ever and anon discovering in
some intricate and unexpected recess, a simple and silvan beauty, which pleases him the more, that it seems to be
peculiarly his own property as the first discoverer.
In one of these recesses, and so near its opening as to command the prospect of the river, the broader valley, and the
opposite chain of hills, stood, and, unless neglect and desertion have completed their work, still stands, the ancient and
decayed village of St. Ronan's. The site was singularly picturesque, as the straggling street of the village ran up a very
steep hill, on the side of which were clustered, as it were, upon little terraces, the cottages which composed the place,
seeming, as in the Swiss towns on the Alps, to rise above each other towards the ruins of an old castle, which continued
to occupy the crest of the eminence, and the strength of which had doubtless led the neighbourhood to assemble under
its walls for protection. It must, indeed, have been a place of formidable defence, for, on the side opposite to the town,
its walls rose straight up from the verge of a tremendous and rocky precipice, whose base was washed by Saint
Ronan's burn, as the brook was entitled. On the southern side, where the declivity was less precipitous, the ground had
been carefully levelled into successive terraces, which ascended to the summit of the hill, and were, or rather had been,
connected by staircases of stone, rudely ornamented. In peaceful periods these terraces had been occupied by the
gardens of the Castle, and in times of siege they added to its security, for each commanded the one immediately below
it, so that they could be separately and successively defended, and all were exposed to the fire from the place itself—a
massive square tower of the largest size, surrounded, as usual, by lower buildings, and a high embattled wall. On the
northern side arose a considerable mountain, of which the descent that lay between the eminence on which the Castle
was situated seemed a detached portion, and which had been improved and deepened by three successive huge
trenches. Another very deep trench was drawn in front of the main entrance from the east, where the principal gateway
formed the termination of the street, which, as we have noticed, ascended from the village, and this last defence
completed the fortifications of the tower.
In the ancient gardens of the Castle, and upon all sides of it excepting the western, which was precipitous, large old
trees had found root, mantling the rock and the ancient and ruinous walls with their dusky verdure, and increasing the
effect of the shattered pile which towered up from the centre.
Seated on the threshold of this ancient pile, where the “proud porter” had in former days “rear'd himself,” a stranger
had a complete and commanding view of the decayed village, the houses of which, to a fanciful imagination, might seem
as if they had been suddenly arrested in hurrying down the precipitous hill, and fixed as if by magic in the whimsical
arrangement which they now presented. It was like a sudden pause in one of Amphion's country-dances, when the huts
which were to form the future Thebes were jigging it to his lute. But, with such an observer, the melancholy excited by
the desolate appearance of the village soon overcame all the lighter frolics of the imagination. Originally constructed on
the humble plan used in the building of Scotch cottages about a century ago, the greater part of them had been long
deserted; and their fallen roofs, blackened gables, and ruinous walls, showed Desolation's triumph over Poverty. On
some huts the rafters, varnished with soot, were still standing, in whole or in part, like skeletons, and a few, wholly or
partially covered with thatch, seemed still inhabited, though scarce habitable; for the smoke of the peat-fires, which
prepared the humble meal of the indwellers, stole upwards, not only from the chimneys, its regular vent, but from
various other crevices in the roofs. Nature, in the meanwhile, always changing, but renewing as she changes, was
supplying, by the power of vegetation, the fallen and decaying marks of human labour. Small pollards, which had been
formerly planted around the little gardens, had now waxed into huge and high forest trees; the fruit-trees had extended
their branches over the verges of the little yards, and the hedges had shot up into huge and irregular bushes; while
quantities of dock, and nettles, and hemlock, hiding the ruined walls, were busily converting the whole scene of
desolation into a picturesque forest-bank.
Two houses in St. Ronan's were still in something like decent repair; places essential—the one to the spiritual weal of
the inhabitants, the other to the accommodation of travellers. These were the clergyman's manse, and the village inn. Of
the former we need only say, that it formed no exception to the general rule by which the landed proprietors of Scotland
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seem to proceed in lodging their clergy, not only in the cheapest, but in the ugliest and most inconvenient house which
the genius of masonry can contrive. It had the usual number of chimneys—two, namely—rising like asses' ears at either
end, which answered the purpose for which they were designed as ill as usual. It had all the ordinary leaks and inlets to
the fury of the elements, which usually form the subject of the complaints of a Scottish incumbent to his brethren of the
presbytery; and, to complete the picture, the clergyman being a bachelor, the pigs had unmolested admission to the
garden and court-yard, broken windows were repaired with brown paper, and the disordered and squalid appearance
of a low farm-house, occupied by a bankrupt tenant, dishonoured the dwelling of one, who, besides his clerical
character, was a scholar and a gentleman, though a little of a humourist.
Beside the manse stood the kirk of St. Ronan's, a little old mansion with a clay floor, and an assemblage of wretched
pews, originally of carved oak, but heedfully clouted with white fir-deal. But the external form of the church was elegant
in the outline, having been built in Catholic times, when we cannot deny to the forms of ecclesiastical architecture that
grace, which, as good Protestants, we refuse to their doctrine. The fabric hardly raised its grey and vaulted roof among
the crumbling hills of mortality by which it was surrounded, and was indeed so small in size, and so much lowered in
height by the graves on the outside, which ascended half way up the low Saxon windows, that it might itself have
appeared only a funeral vault, or mausoleum of larger size. Its little square tower, with the ancient belfry, alone
distinguished it from such a monument. But when the grey-headed beadle turned the keys with his shaking hand, the
antiquary was admitted into an ancient building, which, from the style of its architecture, and some monuments of the
Mowbrays of St. Ronan's, which the old man was accustomed to point out, was generally conjectured to be as early as
the thirteenth century.
These Mowbrays of St. Ronan's seem to have been at one time a very powerful family. They were allied to, and friends
of the house of Douglas, at the time when the overgrown power of that heroic race made the Stewarts tremble on the
Scottish throne. It followed that, when, as our old naïf historian expresses it, “no one dared to strive with a Douglas,
nor yet with a Douglas's man, for if he did, he was sure to come by the waur,” the family of St. Ronan's shared their
prosperity, and became lords of almost the whole of the rich valley of which their mansion commanded the prospect.
But upon the turning of the tide, in the reign of James II., they became despoiled of the greater part of those fair
acquisitions, and succeeding events reduced their importance still farther. Nevertheless, they were, in the middle of the
seventeenth century, still a family of considerable note; and Sir Reginald Mowbray, after the unhappy battle of Dunbar,
distinguished himself by the obstinate defence of the Castle against the arms of Cromwell, who, incensed at the
opposition which he had unexpectedly encountered in an obscure corner, caused the fortress to be dismantled and
blown up with gunpowder.
After this catastrophe the old Castle was abandoned to ruin; but Sir Reginald, when, like Allan Ramsay's Sir William
Worthy, he returned after the Revolution, built himself a house in the fashion of that later age, which he prudently suited
in size to the diminished fortunes of his family. It was situated about the middle of the village, whose vicinity was not in
those days judged any inconvenience, upon a spot of ground more level than was presented by the rest of the acclivity,
where, as we said before, the houses were notched as it were into the side of the steep bank, with little more level
ground about them than the spot occupied by their site. But the Laird's house had a court in front and a small garden
behind, connected with another garden, which, occupying three terraces, descended, in emulation of the orchards of the
old Castle, almost to the banks of the stream.
The family continued to inhabit this new messuage until about fifty years before the commencement of our history, when
it was much damaged by a casual fire; and the Laird of the day, having just succeeded to a more pleasant and
commodious dwelling at the distance of about three miles from the village, determined to abandon the habitation of his
ancestors. As he cut down at the same time an ancient rookery, (perhaps to defray the expenses of the migration,) it
became a common remark among the country folk, that the decay of St. Ronan's began when Laird Lawrence and the
crows flew off.
The deserted mansion, however, was not consigned to owls and birds of the desert; on the contrary, for many years it
witnessed more fun and festivity than when it had been the sombre abode of a grave Scottish Baron of “auld lang syne.”
In short, it was converted into an inn, and marked by a huge sign, representing on the one side St. Ronan catching hold
of the devil's game leg with his Episcopal crook, as the story may be read in his veracious legend, and on the other the
Mowbray arms. It was by far the best frequented public-house in that vicinity; and a thousand stories were told of the
revels which had been held within its walls, and the gambols achieved under the influence of its liquors. All this,
however, had long since passed away, according to the lines in my frontispiece,
“A merry place, 'twas said, in days of yore;
But something ail'd it now,—the place was cursed.”
The worthy couple (servants and favourites of the Mowbray family) who first kept the inn, had died reasonably wealthy,
after long carrying on a flourishing trade, leaving behind them an only daughter. They had acquired by degrees not only
the property of the inn itself, of which they were originally tenants, but of some remarkably good meadow-land by the
side of the brook, which, when touched by a little pecuniary necessity, the Lairds of St. Ronan's had disposed of
piecemeal, as the readiest way to portion off a daughter, procure a commission for the younger son, and the like
emergencies. So that Meg Dods, when she succeeded to her parents, was a considerable heiress, and, as such, had the
honour of refusing three topping-farmers, two bonnet-lairds, and a horse-couper, who successively made proposals to
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her.
Many bets were laid on the horse-couper's success, but the knowing ones were taken in. Determined to ride the fore-
horse herself, Meg would admit no helpmate who might soon assert the rights of a master; and so, in single blessedness,
and with the despotism of Queen Bess herself, she ruled all matters with a high hand, not only over her men-servants
and maid-servants, but over the stranger within her gates, who, if he ventured to oppose Meg's sovereign will and
pleasure, or desire to have either fare or accommodation different from that which she chose to provide for him, was
instantly ejected with that answer which Erasmus tells us silenced all complaints in the German inns of his time, Quære
aliud hospitium; or, as Meg expressed it, “Troop aff wi' ye to another public.” As this amounted to a banishment in
extent equal to sixteen miles from Meg's residence, the unhappy party on whom it was passed, had no other refuge save
by deprecating the wrath of his landlady, and resigning himself to her will. It is but justice to Meg Dods to state, that
though hers was a severe and almost despotic government, it could not be termed a tyranny, since it was exercised,
upon the whole, for the good of the subject.
The vaults of the old Laird's cellar had not, even in his own day, been replenished with more excellent wines; the only
difficulty was to prevail on Meg to look for the precise liquor you chose;—to which it may be added, that she often
became restiff when she thought a company had had “as much as did them good,” and refused to furnish any more
supplies. Then her kitchen was her pride and glory; she looked to the dressing of every dish herself, and there were
some with which she suffered no one to interfere. Such were the cock-a-leeky, and the savoury minced collops, which
rivalled in their way even the veal cutlets of our old friend Mrs. Hall, at Ferrybridge. Meg's table-linen, bed-linen, and
so forth, were always home-made, of the best quality, and in the best order; and a weary day was that to the
chambermaid in which her lynx eye discovered any neglect of the strict cleanliness which she constantly enforced.
Indeed, considering Meg's country and calling, we were never able to account for her extreme and scrupulous nicety,
unless by supposing that it afforded her the most apt and frequent pretext for scolding her maids; an exercise in which
she displayed so much eloquence and energy, that we must needs believe it to have been a favourite one.
We have only further to commemorate, the moderation of Meg's reckonings, which, when they closed the banquet,
often relieved the apprehensions, instead of saddening the heart, of the rising guest. A shilling for breakfast, three
shillings for dinner, including a pint of old port, eighteenpence for a snug supper—such were the charges of the inn of St.
Ronan's, under this landlady of the olden world, even after the nineteenth century had commenced; and they were ever
tendered with the pious recollection, that her good father never charged half so much, but these weary times rendered it
impossible for her to make the lawing less.
Notwithstanding all these excellent and rare properties, the inn at Saint Ronan's shared the decay of the village to which
it belonged. This was owing to various circumstances. The high-road had been turned aside from the place, the
steepness of the street being murder (so the postilions declared) to their post-horses. It was thought that Meg's stern
refusal to treat them with liquor, or to connive at their exchanging for porter and whisky the corn which should feed their
cattle, had no small influence on the opinion of those respectable gentlemen, and that a little cutting and levelling would
have made the ascent easy enough; but let that pass. This alteration of the highway was an injury which Meg did not
easily forgive to the country gentlemen, most of whom she had recollected when children. “Their fathers,” she said,
“wad not have done the like of it to a lone woman.” Then the decay of the village itself, which had formerly contained a
set of feuars and bonnet-lairds, who, under the name of the Chirupping Club, contrived to drink twopenny, qualified
with brandy or whisky, at least twice or thrice a-week, was some small loss.
The temper and manners of the landlady scared away all customers of that numerous class, who will not allow originality
to be an excuse for the breach of decorum, and who, little accustomed perhaps to attendance at home, loved to play
the great man at an inn, and to have a certain number of bows, deferential speeches, and apologies, in answer to the G
—d d—n ye's which they bestow on the house, attendance, and entertainment. Unto those who commenced this sort of
barter in the Clachan of Saint Ronan's, well could Meg Dods pay it back, in their own coin; and glad they were to
escape from the house with eyes not quite scratched out, and ears not more deafened than if they had been within
hearing of a pitched battle.
Nature had formed honest Meg for such encounters; and as her noble soul delighted in them, so her outward properties
were in what Tony Lumpkin calls a concatenation accordingly. She had hair of a brindled colour, betwixt black and
grey, which was apt to escape in elf-locks from under her mutch when she was thrown into violent agitation—long
skinny hands, terminated by stout talons—grey eyes, thin lips, a robust person, a broad, though flat chest, capital wind,
and a voice that could match a choir of fishwomen. She was accustomed to say of herself in her more gentle moods,
that her bark was worse than her bite; but what teeth could have matched a tongue, which, when in full career, is
vouched to have been heard from the Kirk to the Castle of Saint Ronan's?
These notable gifts, however, had no charms for the travellers of these light and giddy-paced times, and Meg's inn
became less and less frequented. What carried the evil to the uttermost was, that a fanciful lady of rank in the
neighbourhood chanced to recover of some imaginary complaint by the use of a mineral well about a mile and a half
from the village; a fashionable doctor was found to write an analysis of the healing waters, with a list of sundry cures; a
speculative builder took land in feu, and erected lodging-houses, shops, and even streets. At length a tontine
subscription was obtained to erect an inn, which, for the more grace, was called a hotel; and so the desertion of Meg
Dods became general.
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She had still, however, her friends and well-wishers, many of whom thought, that as she was a lone woman, and known
to be well to pass in the world, she would act wisely to retire from public life, and take down a sign which had no longer
fascination for guests. But Meg's spirit scorned submission, direct or implied. “Her father's door,” she said, “should be
open to the road, till her father's bairn should be streekit and carried out at it with her feet foremost. It was not for the
profit—there was little profit at it;—profit?—there was a dead loss; but she wad not be dung by any of them. They
maun hae a hottle, maun they?—and an honest public canna serve them! They may hottle that likes; but they shall see
that Lucky Dods can hottle on as lang as the best of them—ay, though they had made a Tamteen of it, and linkit aw
their breaths of lives, whilk are in their nostrils, on end of ilk other like a string of wild-geese, and the langest liver bruick
a', (whilk was sinful presumption,) she would match ilk ane of them as lang as her ain wind held out.” Fortunate it was
for Meg, since she had formed this doughty resolution, that although her inn had decayed in custom, her land had risen
in value in a degree which more than compensated the balance on the wrong side of her books, and, joined to her usual
providence and economy, enabled her to act up to her lofty purpose.
She prosecuted her trade too with every attention to its diminished income; shut up the windows of one half of her
house, to baffle the tax-gatherer; retrenched her furniture; discharged her pair of post-horses, and pensioned off the old
humpbacked postilion who drove them, retaining his services, however, as an assistant to a still more aged hostler. To
console herself for restrictions by which her pride was secretly wounded, she agreed with the celebrated Dick Tinto to
re-paint her father's sign, which had become rather undecipherable; and Dick accordingly gilded the Bishop's crook,
and augmented the horrors of the Devil's aspect, until it became a terror to all the younger fry of the school-house, and
a sort of visible illustration of the terrors of the arch-enemy, with which the minister endeavoured to impress their infant
minds.
Under this renewed symbol of her profession, Meg Dods, or Meg Dorts, as she was popularly termed, on account of
her refractory humours, was still patronised by some steady customers. Such were the members of the Killnakelty Hunt,
once famous on the turf and in the field, but now a set of venerable grey-headed sportsmen, who had sunk from fox-
hounds to basket-beagles and coursing, and who made an easy canter on their quiet nags a gentle induction to a dinner
at Meg's. “A set of honest decent men they were,” Meg said; “had their sang and their joke—and what for no? Their
bind was just a Scots pint over-head, and a tappit-hen to the bill, and no man ever saw them the waur o't. It was thae
cockle-brained callants of the present day that would be mair owerta'en with a puir quart than douce folk were with a
magnum.”
Then there was a set of ancient brethren of the angle from Edinburgh, who visited Saint Ronan's frequently in the spring
and summer, a class of guests peculiarly acceptable to Meg, who permitted them more latitude in her premises than she
was known to allow to any other body. “They were,” she said, “pawky auld carles, that kend whilk side their bread
was buttered upon. Ye never kend of ony o' them ganging to the spring, as they behoved to ca' the stinking well yonder.
—Na, na—they were up in the morning—had their parritch, wi' maybe a thimblefull of brandy, and then awa up into the
hills, eat their bit cauld meat on the heather, and came hame at e'en with the creel full of caller trouts, and had them to
their dinner, and their quiet cogue of ale, and their drap punch, and were set singing their catches and glees, as they ca'd
them, till ten o'clock, and then to bed, wi' God bless ye—and what for no?”
Thirdly, we may commemorate some ranting blades, who also came from the metropolis to visit Saint Ronan's,
attracted by the humours of Meg, and still more by the excellence of her liquor, and the cheapness of her reckonings.
These were members of the Helter Skelter Club, of the Wildfire Club, and other associations formed for the express
purpose of getting rid of care and sobriety. Such dashers occasioned many a racket in Meg's house, and many a
bourasque in Meg's temper. Various were the arts of flattery and violence by which they endeavoured to get supplies
of liquor, when Meg's conscience told her they had had too much...
